Orð og tunga - 01.06.2013, Side 134

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Orð og tunga
had already reached England during that time. This document indi-
cates that queen Eleanor of Castille bought seven oranges after a cargo
ship from Spain arrived in Southampton (Root 1980:304).
The bitter Persian oranges were replaced in the fifteenth century
by a sweet variety, brought to Europe from India by Portuguese trad-
ers (Harper 2001). This sweet variety reached northern Germany by
the beginning of the eighteenth century via Amsterdam and Ham-
burg (Drosdowski 1989:40). The German term Apfelsine (derived from
Old Dutch: appelsina, Low German: Appelsina) for the sweet orange is
a literal translation of 'China-apple'6 from an old word Sina for China,
because oranges were brought to Europe from South China around
the year 1500 (Drosdowski 1989:40). In Germany, the term Orange for
the fruit was generally used in the south, while Apfelsine was more
prevalent north of the river Main (Ammon et al. 2004:545), indicating
that the term 'China-apple/ which is also used in all Scandinavian
languages (Danish: appelsin, Norwegian-Bokmál: appelsin, Norwe-
gian-Nynorsk: appelsin, Swedish: apelsin, Icelandic: appelsína, Faroese:
appilsin), is typical for Northern Europe. In Denmark and Sweden,
references to oranges can be found in documents from the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries (Heizmann 2005:43). It is unclear when or-
anges were first introduced to Iceland (see ch. 3).
The color term orange, which is derived from the name of the fruit
and likely a shortening of 'orange-colored/ was seemingly not used
in English before 1542 (Ammon et al. 2004:545; Ordbog over det Dan-
ske Sprog 1975:XV.1174; Harper 2001). Despite the fact that the fruit
is generally called 'China-apple' in Scandinavia, most Scandinavian
languages use a word derived from orange to indicate color (Dan-
ish: orange, Norwegian-Bokmál: oransje, Norwegian-Nynorsk: oran-
sje, Swedish: orange). The only exceptions are Icelandic and Faroese,
which have developed compound terms or secondary color terms ac-
cording to Berlin and Kay (Icelandic: most commonly appelsínugidur,
Faroese: brandgidur, reyðgulur).
3 The Fruit Orange in Icelandic
Icelanders have used a number of terms to describe the orange fruit
(Table 5), which are largely derived or translated frorn Latin (pomum
6 In the eighteenth century the term Chinaapfel was also used in Germany in addi-
tion to Apfelsine (Drosdowski 1989:40).